Saturday, November 22, 2008

This post is a reaction to TED lecture of Lee Smolin from 2003, which was republished recently at YouTube. In fact, I was quite surprised, how deeply Mr. Smolin recognized the connection between society and spin network of Aether fluctuations, on which the Aether independent logic of LQG theory is based.

Of course, the title question is highly political, because for many mainstream science proponents is rather unpleasant to admit, such proclamativelly objective organization like science is driven by inter-subjective meaning of scientists like sectarian community, rather then by bare facts - despite of their origin. Such stance is somewhat idealistic or even hypocritical, indeed - because just these members are refuting or even proactivelly denying the introduction of new ideas into mainstream from outside, especially from so-called cranks. These proponents are labeling the opponents purportedly by this (often quite rude) way, and they've developed a various lists of ad-hoced criterions (1, 2), analogous to Malleus maleficarum handbook from medieval times, which could help them to distinguish the harmful people violating the scientific integrity without having familiar with their ideas at all. These proponents are often masquerading like proper skeptics, while exhibiting one or more symptoms of pathological disbelief. The sectarian character of mainstream community is feeded by educational system, as we can demonstrate somewhat later.

Unfortunately mainstream science - the theoretical physics in particular - is rather close to sectarian society being the non-profit organization dependent on mandatory fees more, then other parts of free market society. But the stance, the science is dependent to inter-subjective meaning like democracy follows directly from so-called scientific method based on peer-review and Popper's methodology, by which theories simply have no place in science, only facts - because theories could be never considered proven with certainty. But the decision, what is still fact and what is just a theory is fully arbitrary here and it depends on the inter-subjective consensus of scientific community. It can be demonstrated easily by number of boundary phenomena, like the homeopathy, various psychic phenomena or cold fusion, which are refuted by mainstream science proponents for years - not saying about Aether concept and many others.

For example, mainstream science decided before years, Aether doesn't exist, because its motion should be observable by using of light - which wasn't confirmed experimentally with sufficient precision. But the analogy of light waves in vacuum are waves at wave surface and by using of such waves surface can be never observed, because is serving as a space for them already. Therefore the negative result of M-M experiment and others cannot serve as a ultimate evidence against Aether concept.

Therefore, Mr. Smolin is right in large extent and mainstream science still depends on inter-subjective opinion heavily, thus exhibiting a character of democracy or even meritocracy. Simply because facts are rarely considered by science, only interpretations of facts - exactly the opposite, what the scientific method should be. This is logical consequence of tautological character of symmetry in Poppers methodology, where each negation of some theory becomes another theory, which should be tested independently. From this perspective Poppers methodology doesn't bring any ultimate criterion of the validity of so-called scientific approach and Mr. Smolin is quite right in his point, something like scientific method doesn't exists, in fact.

In analogy to previous example, the famous M-M experiment "proving the absence of Aether reliably" should by still handled with caution, because the absence of Aether wasn't, what the M-M experiment has measured, exactly - such conclusion is just a weak interpretation of its result and this interpretation can be mistaken by the same way, like whatever other interpretation or theory. Unfortunately, many mainstream science proponents are driven by tendency of pathological disbelief to deny, rather than doubt, their approach to reality is biased - so that Aether concept was thrown out of science for more then one century.

With compare to above, AWT introduces a concept of so-called pluralities, which are generalization of dualities used in quantum field theories. Dualities are originally a concept of projective geometry, which can be called an "perspective of interpretation" or "point of view". The significant point here is, the things often appear reciprocal from reciprocal perspective. The simplest example is Maldacena duality: when you're sitting inside of gravitational lens, the path of light appears straight, the space-time appears curved for you and everything appears OK from relativity perspective.

But whenever we are observing the same phenomena from outside, everything will change: here no signs of time dilatation and curved space - but the path of light appears curved, instead. This leads to the Lorentz symmetry violation, the causality violation (you can see a multiple images/consequences of the same phenomena) and other effects following from quantum mechanics. The nested Aether foam concept introduces a concept of pluralities here. This doesn't mean, the causality of scientific thinking is violated - it just means, it strictly depends on the observational perspective, the postulate set chosen in particular. By AWT every rule violates itself in less or more global scale, the progressive approach of mainstream science becomes brake of the further evolution less or more lately and the roles of intuitive and formal thinking alternates during such evolution, thus forming a nested phases of Aether foam. Such behavior can be demonstrated by relation of interactions inside of nested fields of density gradients to Goedel incompleteness theorem and the liar paradox. By such way, AWT reconciles the positivistic philosophy of many mainstream proponents with constructivism of Lee Smolin and others independent scientists.

Mr. Lee Smolin basically said, most difficult thing in science is to admit, someone else could have his piece of truth. By AWT the theories is behaving like condensate of neural waves inside of human brains, which are intensifying the information spreading by such a way, we can compare it to density blob, focusing the information spreading around it like optical lens. But the very same effect makes a communities of different theorists mutually intolerant, because such gradient exhibits a "surface tension", which leads to repulsive interactions, which we can observe at the case of mercury droplets easily. Occasionally, such community can close itself into sectarian informational singularity due total reflection phenomena, occurring at the surface of such causality blob. thus changing itself into boson condensate. Such singularity is formed by systematic censorship and personal relationships (a biased view attracts another people with biased view and their actions are synergistic) - so that only single-minded opinions will prevail at the end by selection. Such selection occurs even during fall of matter into black holes, which are collecting just a denses parts of matter, while radiating the rest at the form of so called accretion radiation. Most groups in blogosphere exhibit the very same behavior.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

This post is a reaction to the NewScientistarticle of the same name. By AWT the Universe is behaving like interior of very dense star, where the energy spreads along surfaces of foamy density fluctuations, similar to those, which we can observe during condensation of every dense particle system. Now we can start to think:

"If such environment would be completely homogeneous, could we see something from it?"

Of course not - our ability to see some matter or phenomena is given by the fact, the randomness of system is violated in certain space and/or time. For example, we can see a laser ray in atmosphere just because such atmosphere is a bit inhomogeneous. The laser ray on the picture bellow is FASOR used at the Starfire Optical Range for LIDAR and laser guide star experiments is tuned to the sodium D2a line and used to excite sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere. In vacuum we could never see some ray from outside.

But the very same reason, which enables us to see the stars, red shift or expansion of Universe means, it's related to some dispersion and divergence in less or more distant perspective. It's tic for tat: if you want to see at least something predictable and regular, such regularity and symmetry would be always broken in less or more distant perspective (compare the geometry of density blog interactions, as described herein). It means, when we can see a light of distant stars, it's just because the vacuum contains some inhomogeneities, which can serve for causal energy spreading in transversal waves. But just these inhomogeneities are the very reason, why such causality is violated in less or more distant perspective, because you cannot separate causal fluctuations of vacuum from these random ones.

Therefore the light of distant stars appears reddish, and the speed of this redness is accelerated with distance (and the speed of its speed as well). This is because the same reason, which serves for light spreading is the reason of its dispersion, which we can perceive as a red shift and expansion of space-time. We can observe it as a omni-directional Universe expansion. And this expansion even proceeds the faster, the farther is the distance, from which we are observing it. We are calling it a dark energy. By AWT our ability to see at least something is always connected with nonlinearity of this observation in less or more global perspective. Of course, this cannot serve as an evidence of geocentric model, because it's merely an observational illusion, which is relative to each observer in Universe. We can compare to keeping of lantern inside of dense fog: after then our Universe would appear like spherical zone of iluminated fog symmetric to our location, no matter when we are staying right now.

In fact, we should observe the very same effects even at the water surface, when we would use the surface water waves as the only source of information about our neigbourhood, because water surface is never quite homogeneous, as it always contains a Brownian noise fluctuations. But these density fluctuations cannot be seen from surface wave perspective directly, they would appear like quantum chaos instead by deforming the images of other objects at proximity.

Main purpose of this post is just to track rather fast re-introduction of ancient Aether model (possibly under influence of AWT concepts) into mainstream science again by using of online available sources. It means, this list is biased toward AWT concepts and only links to other articles with minimal comments will be presented here and the list will be extended gradually regarding to public proposals:

Principia Discordia (1958)Discordianism is based on pantheistic idea, that chaos is all that there is, and that order and disorder are both illusions (a multiple-ego solipsism).

More is different (Aug, 4, 1972)P.W. Anderson suggested the fundamental principle of emergence, i.e. that ‘More is Different’, meaning that complex physical systems may exhibit behavior, that cannot be understood only in terms of the laws governing their microscopic constituents. Later this claim was strengthened by proving that many macroscopic observable properties of infinite periodic Ising lattice cannot in general be derived from a it's microscopic description.

Fabric of reality (March 1997)Physicist David Deutsch proposed causual foam concept named after his book, promoting the multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles.

Superfluid helium as a vacuum (Jun 1, 1998)Slava Grebenev and colleagues found that small molecules dissolved in droplets of liquid helium can rotate freely, just like they do in a vacuum.

Return of the Aether (Jan 1, 1999)Dr. Sid Deutsch in his book makes sense out "quantum weirdness" by resurrecting a long-buried 19th century scientific concept. Only the 140-year-old idea of the ether, brought up to date to to fit modern theory, can explain these gaps.

Shock-wave cosmology inside a black hole (October 17, 2002)J. Smoller and B. Temple are presenting a shock-wave solutions, indicating a cosmological model in which the big bang arises from a localized explosion occurring inside the black hole of an asymptotically flat Schwarzschild spacetime in analogy to expyrotic cosmology.

Cosmology from the Top Down (May 29, 2003)In his talk,Prof. S. Hawking presents observer dependent "top down" cosmology, in which universe exhibits an infinite number of histories and futures, which is consistent with AWT dispersive model of omnidirectional Universe expansion, as proposed first by J.C.Cranwell in about 2004.

New Theory: Universe Was Born in a Black Hole (17 September, 2003)Blake Temple says, the universe will emerge from all this as something like an exploded star, called a supernova, but on an enormously large scale. Einstein's equations work equally well if time runs forward or backwards. But explosive shockwaves, which include an increase in entropy, are time-irreversible. The new theory satisfies Einstein's equations reportedly, while allowing universe to expand. Compare recent podcast of Brian Greene.

Life inside a black hole (10 February, 2006)Paul Wesson speculates about a way for you to live inside a black hole: find one that has five dimensions...

Luminiferous aether and physical motivation (May 18, 2006)Lubos Motl represents his satiety by fact, "101 years after the discovery of special relativity, some people still think that the luminiferous aether was a well motivated idea"...

You are made of space-time (12 August, 2006)An popular article about LQG theory and Smolin, Markopoulou and Bilson-Thompson approach to the foamy structure of space-time, driven by causual triangulation of the dynamic mesh of quantum loops.

The universe is a string-net liquid (15 Mar, 2007)Wen and Levin are introducing an idea, what if electrons were not really elementary, but were formed at the ends of long "strings" of other, fundamental particles? They formulated a model in which such strings are free to move "like noodles in a soup" and weave together into huge "string-nets".

Mathematician suggests extra dimensions are time-like (April 17, 2007)In a recent study, mathematician George Sparling examines a fundamental question of the nature of space and time. Sparling offers an alternative idea: space-time may have six dimensions, with the extra two being time-like.

A Two-Time Universe? (May 15, 2007)USC College theoretical physicist Itzhak Bars has pioneered efforts to discern how a second dimension of time could help physicists better explain the laws of nature. (compare the Vafa's F-theory)

Liquid computing theory.. (July 25, 2007)The brain works like a pond in which stones are thrown. The waves caused by this don't disappear immediately, but rather overlap with each other and collect information about how many stones were thrown in and how big they were. The main difference is just that the waves in the brain spread in a network of neurons and at very high speed.

The Void.. (October, 2007)Frank Close, a Professor of Physics at Oxford University introduces a picture of space-time as acting like an elastic medium, which is reminiscent of the very ether that Einstein's work on electromagnetic radiation (p. 89).

New-School 'Aether' May Shed Light on Neutron Stars (October 10, 2007)The UM group proposes, that an aether concept may still have a place in physics: not representing a medium for light waves, but a universal preferred frame of reference that is physical in nature. Unfortunatelly, a vector-field is rather formally understood concept here.

Emergent spacetimes (28 Nov, 2007)Silke Weinfurtner in his thesis disputes a possibility, that perfect fluid sphere geometry of spacetime may be an emergent phenomenon, which has been motivated by the Analogue Gravity programme.

Fiber-Optical Analog of the Event Horizon (March 7, 2008)This experimental work demonstrated, that physics of vacuum at the event horizon is analogy to spreading of waves in moving media and event horizons are formed where the local speed of the medium exceeds the wave velocity. By sending of ultrashort pulses into foamy structure of optical fibers was demonstrated the blue-shifting of light at a white-hole horizon and that system is capable of probing the quantum effects of horizons, in particular Hawking radiation.

Using Causality to Solve the Puzzle of Quantum Spacetime (June 25, 2008)If we think of empty spacetime as some immaterial substance, consisting of a very large number of minute, structureless pieces, and if we then let these microscopic building blocks interact with one another according to simple rules dictated by gravity and quantum theor, a new approach to the decades-old problem of quantum gravity goes back to basics and shows how the building blocks of space and time pull themselves together. (readers response).

The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces (October 22, 2008)Some physicists (especially those interested in LQCD) theorize, that space is highly structured by the grid, which is the primary ingredient of physical reality and the substance from which all physical matter is formed. F. Wilczek says, the grid is a conceptual descendant of ether, that mysterious substance scientists once believed filled empty space.

Why Einstein was wrong about relativity (October 29, 2008)Mitchell Feigenbauminsists that Einstein's theory has nothing to do with light - whatever history and the textbooks might say. "Not only is it not necessary," he says, "but there's absolutely no room in the theory for it." Compare the R. Close's derivation of Lorentz transform by using of clock, based on wave spreading. By AWT the position of light is still somewhat special, as it forms the fastest interaction, mediating the causal information spreading for us.

Remarks on the world-sheet saga (Jun 11, 2009)From Schroer's general reasoning follows, only 0-dimensional particles are acceptable building blocks in physics. So string theory must be a theory of point-like particle fields with infinitely many components, too. It follows that one can never include winding modes even if the target space is not simply connected and there is no T-duality.

Mimicking celestial mechanics in metamaterials (July 20, 2009)In this experiments it has been proposed a link of energy spreading through GaInAsP metamaterial sponge to celesial mechanics, the spreading of light through vacuum in particular (formation of event horizon a photon sphere of black holes, etc.. - compare the AWT explanation here).

The invariant set postulate (June 29, 2009)Tim Palmer proposes a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity based on assumption, observable reality forms a smaller fractal subset of states in more general state space (supposedly in simmilar way, like observable density fluctutuations of gas are forming subset of many uobservable states of individual molecules).

Splitting Time from Space (November 24, 2009)New quantum theory of Peter Hořava topples Einstein's spacetime. Unzipping the fabric of spacetime and harking back to 19th-century notions of time could lead to a theory of quantum gravity.

On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton (January 6, 2010)Erik Verlinde’s in arXiv preprint argues that the emergent description of gravity as being due to the exchange of closed strings can no longer be valid. In fact, it appears that strings have to be emergent too.

What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit? (April 6, 2011)Richard H. Thaler: "I am proposing that we now change the usage of the word Aether, using the old spelling, since there is no need for a term that refers to something that does not exist. Instead, I suggest we use that term to describe the role of any free parameter used in a similar way: that is, Aether is the thing that makes my theory work."